Various: Faith and Power - An ESP-Disk Sampler

This kind of thing happens from time to time. When I wrote about this Directing Hand LP 18 months ago, I came across this review of it, which says,

on Who Put The Blood we hear their idiosyncratic and doom-laden version of Child Ballad 13 'Edward', and we also hear Blackwall being prompted to turn in a free-form vocalising and wailing episode propelled by the manic drumming of Neilson. The latter experiment is clearly inspired by the Patty Waters LP for ESP-disk, something which has become a common touchstone for young minds everywhere these days

I thought I'd never heard of Patty Waters at the time. Perhaps not surprising, since I'm no young mind. But I affect to keep some of the trappings of youthful-mindedness, so I trooped off to eMusic and downloaded the album. Now I find that I'd actually had half of the album (only one of the eight tracks, but it's as long as the other seven put together) on this Wire covermount CD since 2002.

Now let me confess. I haven't actually been here these past two weeks. Not at my desk. My first fortnight holiday since 2005, in the South of France with Lucy and the Boy. And no music (the last fifteen posts were written and cued/queued up before I left), aside from this CD which is OK once you get used to the singing style. The headphones I took stayed in the holdall throughout. So I get home and the first thing I hear is this ESP-Disk, mainly made up of post-Coltrane skronking and honking. You might think that an album that starts with Albert Ayler, Ornette and Sun Ra would be bound to get more gentle as it went on. But Track 4 is by the Bob James Trio with Robert Ashley. It's called Wolfman, and it's scary. Not an easy way back in.

I never did get on with that Patty Waters album, either — listened to it twice in a fortnight (including on a long walk round the streets of Camberwell and Herne Hill in the not so early hours of the morning, two nights before Christmas) and then forgot about it.

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